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If this diagnosis is made, then a full and clear explanation should be given to the mother, or at any rate to such mothers—and fortunately they are in the majority—who are capable of appreciating the point of psychology involved, and of correcting the management of the child so as to overcome the negativism. To attempt treatment by prescribing drugs, or in any other way than by correcting the faulty management, is to court failure. As Charcot has said, in functional disorders it is not so much the prescription which matters as the prescriber.

But the task of the doctor is often one of even greater difficulty. Often enough there will be a combination of organic disturbance with functional trouble. For example, a girl of eighteen years old suffered from a pain in the left arm which has persisted on and off since the olecranon had been fractured when she was two years of age. She was the youngest of a large family, and had never been separated for a day from the care and apprehensions of her mother. The joint was stiff, and there was considerable deformity. The pain always increased when she was tired or unhappy. Again, a girl had some slight cystitis with frequent micturition, and this passed by slow degrees into a purely functional irritability of the bladder, which called for micturition at frequent intervals both by day and night. In such cases treatment must endeavour to control both factors—the local organic disturbance must if possible be removed, and the faults of management corrected.